Speaker 1: Moments ago, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a targeted military
Speaker 1: operation to roll back the Uranian threat to Israel's very survival.
Speaker 2: On Friday, Israel launched what it says was a preemptive
Speaker 2: strike on Iran meant to address an immediate and inevitable
Speaker 2: threat on Iran's part to construct a nuclear bomb well.
Speaker 3: Israel's military says two hundred fighter jets completed strikes on
Speaker 3: more than one hundred targets, including nuclear facilities, in different
Speaker 3: areas of Iran. Israel's military claims Iran is advancing a
Speaker 3: secret program to build nuclear weapons, and says Tehran has
Speaker 3: the capacity to make a nuclear bomb within days.
Speaker 1: I want to assure the civilized world we will not
Speaker 1: let the world's most dangerous regime get the world's most
Speaker 1: dangerous weapons.
Speaker 2: The strikes killed key military figures in Iran as well
Speaker 2: as several nuclear scientists, Promising payback would be severe, Iran
Speaker 2: launched attacks of its own.
Speaker 4: When Iran's Supreme leader I Tolder Ali Kamini issued this statement,
Speaker 4: he said, the Zionist regime opened its filthy and bloody
Speaker 4: hand to commit a crime in our beloved country and
Speaker 4: revealed its evil nature by striking residential centers more than
Speaker 4: in the past.
Speaker 2: All this comes as talks were scheduled between Iran and
Speaker 2: the US over the future of Iran's nuclear program, which
Speaker 2: have now been canceled. From Schwarz Media, I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 2: This is seven AM today, Middle East correspondent for The
Speaker 2: Economist Greek Carlstrom on why Israel chose this moment to strike,
Speaker 2: how it's angling for regime change in Iran, and what
Speaker 2: it will take to de escalate the conflict. It's Tuesday,
Speaker 2: June seventeenth, So Greg, let's begin with the strikes the
Speaker 2: Israeli government launched last week on Iran. It was calling
Speaker 2: them preemptive, saying that there was an immediate, inevitable threat
Speaker 2: from Iran to construct a nuclear bomb. So is that true.
Speaker 5: We don't know, is the short answer.
Speaker 6: The Israeli government has not provided any evidence to substantiate
Speaker 6: that claim. It's not to say there isn't evidence, but
Speaker 6: they haven't provided any, and what their claiming contradicts what
Speaker 6: just about every foreign intelligence agency had estimated in recent months.
Speaker 6: The American Director of National Intelligence said just as recently
Speaker 6: as March in congressional testimony that America didn't think Iran
Speaker 6: was actively trying to build a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 5: The assessment was that even though.
Speaker 6: Iran was close to being able to enrich weapons grade uranium,
Speaker 6: it didn't yet have the capabilities to fast that into
Speaker 6: a working nuclear bomb. That would have probably taken a
Speaker 6: year to a year and a half. So, again, what
Speaker 6: the Israelis are saying very very different from what everyone
Speaker 6: else in the intelligence community has said.
Speaker 2: Okay, and so in terms of the I guess achievability
Speaker 2: of being able to wipe out Iran's nuclear capability, what
Speaker 2: do we know about whether or not Israel has the
Speaker 2: capacity to do that.
Speaker 6: Well, it certainly has the capacity to set back Iran's
Speaker 6: nuclear program if you look at some of the targets
Speaker 6: that it has struck so far. It seems to have
Speaker 6: destroyed the above ground enrichment facility at Niton's, which was
Speaker 6: one of the facilities that Iran used to enrich uranium
Speaker 6: to sixty percent purity, which is a short hop away
Speaker 6: from weapons grade. It also seems to have destroyed, for example,
Speaker 6: another facility near Isfahan that converts uranium gas into uranium metal,
Speaker 6: which is a large component in a nuclear warhead.
Speaker 5: That seems to have been destroyed.
Speaker 6: These things will take many months, if not a year
Speaker 6: or two for Iran to rebuild, and it doesn't have
Speaker 6: replacements for those facilities. So it has set back what
Speaker 6: we know of Iran's nuclear program. But then there are
Speaker 6: a bunch of questions. For example, the stockpile of highly
Speaker 6: enriched uranium that Iran has, where is that?
Speaker 5: Has it dispersed some of that to facilities.
Speaker 6: That we don't know about that the IAEA, the UNS
Speaker 6: Nuclear Agency doesn't know about. It's possible that there is
Speaker 6: a clandestine piece to Iran's nuclear program that Israel won't
Speaker 6: be able to destroy that Iran could then use to
Speaker 6: try and rush towards producing a bomb.
Speaker 2: Now, so why do you think Israel chose this moment
Speaker 2: to strike and also chose to assassinate the specific Iranian
Speaker 2: leaders that it did.
Speaker 5: I think there's two goals there.
Speaker 6: One is a short term tactical goal, which is to
Speaker 6: make harder for Iran to organize a response a retaliation,
Speaker 6: and we saw that on Friday. It took the better
Speaker 6: part of the day for Iran to put together a
Speaker 6: ballistic missile attack on Israel, in part because you know,
Speaker 6: the commander of the missile force had been killed, and
Speaker 6: so there was no one to authorize that response.
Speaker 5: That's one thing.
Speaker 6: And then I think the second motivation, and this is
Speaker 6: becoming increasingly clear if you listen to Begnimi, N'taanno or
Speaker 6: other Israeli officials, the second motivation is I think they
Speaker 6: would like to destabilize, if.
Speaker 5: Not change, the regime in Iran.
Speaker 6: And I think the calculation is that wiping out the
Speaker 6: military and security leadership of the country is going to
Speaker 6: make the regime unstable, and for Israeli policymakers, the hope
Speaker 6: is that it will bring down that regime.
Speaker 7: Tonight, I wish to speak to you, the proud people
Speaker 7: of Iran. As I said yesterday and many times before,
Speaker 7: Israel's fight is not with you. It's not with you,
Speaker 7: the brave people of Iran, whom we respect and admire.
Speaker 7: Our fight is with our common enemy, a murderous regime
Speaker 7: that both oppresses you and impoblishes you. Brave people of Iran.
Speaker 7: Your light will defeat the darkness. I'm with you. The
Speaker 7: people of Israel.
Speaker 5: Are with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. As you say, Israel is being quite explicit about
Speaker 2: its intentions there and Iran, you know, it's a huge
Speaker 2: place in the country of ninety million people, So what
Speaker 2: could happen in the next few weeks and months.
Speaker 6: That is a very good question for which I don't
Speaker 6: have a definitive answer. I mean, I think in the
Speaker 6: very short term right now, there's going to be a
Speaker 6: bit of a rally around the flag effect in Iran.
Speaker 5: People dislike the regime.
Speaker 6: It is deeply unpopular, particularly amongst the young people in Iran,
Speaker 6: But that doesn't necessarily mean that they want a foreign
Speaker 6: country to come in and bomb the regime and change
Speaker 6: it by force.
Speaker 5: Those are two different things.
Speaker 6: So I don't think, you know, in the sort of
Speaker 6: immediate term, we're going to see unrest in the streets.
Speaker 5: But I think the slightly longer term question is, you know, what.
Speaker 6: Does this do to the stability the legitimacy of the regime.
Speaker 6: It has spent decades telling its people that, you know,
Speaker 6: it is preparing for exactly this sort of moment. It is,
Speaker 6: you know, defending the homeland, and it's invested heavily in
Speaker 6: a missile program and a nuclear program and building up
Speaker 6: proxies in the region. It's neglected it's domestic responsibilities of
Speaker 6: you know, focusing on the economy and building infrastructure and
Speaker 6: things like that in order to build up what it
Speaker 6: said was a defense against foreign threat. And then when
Speaker 6: that foreign threat arrives, you know, the regime turned out
Speaker 6: to be absolutely shot through with intelligence leaks and security failureism.
Speaker 6: So what does that do to the legitimacy of the regime?
Speaker 6: What does that mean politically in Iran going forward? We're
Speaker 6: not sure yet, but I think there are going to
Speaker 6: be some ripple.
Speaker 2: Effects coming up after the break. Will Iran pursue its
Speaker 2: nuclear program after this? Greg These attacks came as talks
Speaker 2: were scheduled to take place between the US and Iran,
Speaker 2: So tell me what they were supposed to be discussing.
Speaker 6: So a decade ago, in twenty fifteen, the US and
Speaker 6: other world powers signed a deal with Iran, the JCPOA,
Speaker 6: which put limits on Iran's nuclear program in exchange for
Speaker 6: easing some of the economic sanctions on Iran. Trump abandoned
Speaker 6: that deal in twenty eighteen. He called it the worst
Speaker 6: deal ever negotiated. He promised to negotiate a better one.
Speaker 6: He failed to do that in his first term. Joe
Speaker 6: Biden failed to negotiate a new deal when he was president,
Speaker 6: and so Trump has been trying again to revive that agreement.
Speaker 6: There were five rounds of talks between the United States
Speaker 6: and are On between April and the start of the
Speaker 6: war a few days ago. But the talks had really
Speaker 6: been hung up on a sort of fundamental question of
Speaker 6: whether this agreement would allow Iran to continue enriching uranium
Speaker 6: or not. The Iranians insist, and they're not wrong, that
Speaker 6: enrichment is a right under the Non Proliferation Treaty, and
Speaker 6: they see it as a point of national pride, and
Speaker 6: they want to keep enriching uranium domestically. The Trump administration
Speaker 6: had said it wasn't willing to accept that, and if
Speaker 6: Iron wanted to have nuclear reactors or research reactors, it
Speaker 6: would have to import enriched uranium from abroad. They couldn't
Speaker 6: get past that very fundamental disagreement in what kind of
Speaker 6: deal they were trying to negotiate.
Speaker 2: So, I mean Trump is still saying that a deal
Speaker 2: will happen.
Speaker 1: Well, I hope there's going to be a deal. I
Speaker 1: think it's time for a deal, and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they have to fight it.
Speaker 1: Out, but we're going to see what happens.
Speaker 6: I think there's a good chance you'll.
Speaker 1: Be a deal.
Speaker 2: But I mean, what kind of deal could be reached
Speaker 2: at this stage? Do you think that talks will resume?
Speaker 5: I think in the very near term. I think that's
Speaker 5: wishful thinking.
Speaker 6: I think the Israeli government convinced Trump that military strikes
Speaker 6: on Iran would make Iran more amenable to negotiating a
Speaker 6: deal into making concessions, and I think right now that
Speaker 6: is just a fundamental misreading of the Iranian regime. It
Speaker 6: doesn't want to negotiate under fire. It doesn't want to
Speaker 6: be seen as capitulating to its enemies in Israel and
Speaker 6: in the West. So I think no surprise that the
Speaker 6: most recent round of talk scheduled for Sunday was canceled
Speaker 6: that the Iranians refused to show up. The question going
Speaker 6: forward is at some point does the damage in Iran
Speaker 6: get bad enough that they feel compelled to negotiate. The
Speaker 6: regime doesn't want to concede on its nuclear program, but
Speaker 6: it also wants to survive the war and stay in power,
Speaker 6: And so is there a point at which they decide
Speaker 6: the only way to survive is to make big concessions
Speaker 6: in a new nuclear deal.
Speaker 5: We're not at that point.
Speaker 6: Yet I'm skeptical that Israel by itself can push the
Speaker 6: war to that point. But I think that's going to
Speaker 6: be the key question going forward.
Speaker 2: And just to talk a little more about the US position,
Speaker 2: I mean, to what extent does Israel have the implicit
Speaker 2: backing of Trump as it takes his action in Iran.
Speaker 6: I think there's no doubt that it has American backing.
Speaker 6: I think there's no doubt that Donald Trump not only
Speaker 6: knew about Israel's plans ahead of time, but approve.
Speaker 8: Then just hours before the initial Israeli strikes. The President
Speaker 8: publicly ward is Real not to do this, saying an
Speaker 8: attack could derail long gooing US raw nuclear talks. But
Speaker 8: now President Trump is calling those Israeli strikes excellent, saying
Speaker 8: he gave Arond the chance to make a deal and
Speaker 8: they quote got hit about as hard as you're going
Speaker 8: to get hit, adding there's more to come, a lot more.
Speaker 6: And even though America thus far hasn't taken an offensive role,
Speaker 6: it hasn't joined Israel and carrying out air strikes, it's
Speaker 6: supporting Israel.
Speaker 5: In myriad other ways.
Speaker 6: You have American air defense systems in Israel right now,
Speaker 6: helping to shoot down. Some of these are on the
Speaker 6: in ballistic missiles. America is sharing intelligence with Israel. It
Speaker 6: is obviously resupplying the Israeli army. America is Israel's main
Speaker 6: supplier of military equipment, so it is playing a huge
Speaker 6: supporting role. The question in the next few days is
Speaker 6: whether Israel can convince it to join the war in
Speaker 6: an offensive capacity as well. Israel would like American help
Speaker 6: to strike at four Dough, that deeply buried enrichment facility.
Speaker 6: It has asked America to join air space strikes on
Speaker 6: four Dough. Trump so far has not agreed, but the
Speaker 6: Israeli government is trying to make the case that this
Speaker 6: war will only be successful with American military help. It's
Speaker 6: really pushing Trump to get involved.
Speaker 2: For years, greg Israel and the Allies, they've warned about
Speaker 2: the axis of Iran and Hezbola, and the Asside regime
Speaker 2: in Syria. But over the course of the last year
Speaker 2: we've seen now all three of these either wiped out
Speaker 2: or massively degraded. So just how much at this point
Speaker 2: has the Middle East been reshaped?
Speaker 6: If this had happened two years ago, Israel striking Iran
Speaker 6: Hezbola would have been the first line of defense. That
Speaker 6: is why Iran spent so many years arming it, funding it,
Speaker 6: training it was so that it could, in a moment
Speaker 6: like this, unleash thousands of rockets and missiles on Israel.
Speaker 6: It hasn't done a thing because it has been so
Speaker 6: badly weakened than because now it's in a much weaker
Speaker 6: position domestically. Not just its military capabilities have been damaged,
Speaker 6: but it's in a weaker position politically in Lebanon, and
Speaker 6: I think it's nervous about taking the risk of dragging
Speaker 6: Lebanon back into a war. So again, Iran feels like
Speaker 6: it can't rely on these proxies. It still has Houthis
Speaker 6: and Yemen who can fire the occasional drone or ballistic
Speaker 6: missile at Israel. It still has militias in Iraq, although
Speaker 6: so far they haven't seemed keen on getting involved. But
Speaker 6: Iran finds itself having to defend itself in a way
Speaker 6: that it never expected to.
Speaker 2: Well, Greg, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Also in the news today, Australian officials are working on
Speaker 2: plans to help Australians leave Iran and Israel, but Foreign
Speaker 2: Minister Penny Wong ones it may take time due to
Speaker 2: airspace being closed. Senator Wong says about three hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty people in Iran and three hundred in Israel have
Speaker 2: already registered for assistance and the government is working on
Speaker 2: a plan for assisted departures when it is safe to
Speaker 2: do so. And Prime Minister Anthony Alberinezi will open form
Speaker 2: more talks for Australia to join a new EU security
Speaker 2: and defense partnership. The Prime Minister will use this week's
Speaker 2: G seven summit to hold talks with the EU Commission
Speaker 2: President to explore areas of greater cooperation, including foreign interference,
Speaker 2: counter terrorism and defense capabilities. I'm Ruby Jones. This is
Speaker 2: seven am. See you tomorrow.